The following are the top stories in the national and international press today.

Times of Malta reports that Unesco is concerned about the impact of Renzo Piano’s City Gate plans on Valletta’s World Heritage status and intends to send a team of experts to Malta to assess the project. In another story, it quotes former Enemalta chairman Alex Tranter saying he had not yet read the Auditor General’s report that identified serious shortcomings in the way the corporation’s fuel procurement committee was run under his watch.

L-Orizzont says that the police found more bones at the scene where the dead bodies of a convicted drug trafficker and his son were found on Wednesday. In another story it says that PN Executive President Ann Fenech had benefited from direct orders for her services to government entities.

In-Nazzjon leads with a statement by the Malta Employers Association insisting that the selection process of chairpersons for industrial tribunals was skewed.

The Malta Independent leads with reports of speeches by the Prime Minister and the two deputy PN leaders yesterday morning.

International news

Exit polls in Japan show Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's coalition has won a clear majority. Japan's public broadcaster, NHK, projected a combined win of 74 seats for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner New Komeito in the upper house of parliament.

France 24 says riot police patrolled suburbs west of Paris that have seen cars torched and a police station attacked amid tensions linked to authorities’ handling of France’s ban on Muslim face veils. Some 20 cars were set ablaze overnight and four people detained in a second night of violence.

In an address to the nation, President Anibal Cavaco Silva of Portugal has said he backs the country’s coalition government and ruled out a snap election. According to Expresso, he said that in the current context of national emergency, calling elections was not a solution for the problems Portugal was facing.

The Jerusalem Post reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to hold a referendum on any peace agreement reached with Palestine. This would be the first referendum in Israel's history.

Al-bawaba quotes activist groups in Syria saying 13 members of the same family, mostly women and children, have been killed by pro-government forces in the north-west of the country. Some reports say some of the victims were burnt alive.

Dagbladet reports a Norwegian woman in Dubai who reported being raped, only to receive a 16-month jail sentence for having sex outside marriage, is appealing against the verdict. Marte Deborah Dalelv, who was also convicted of perjury and drinking alcohol, has taken refuge in a Norwegian church.

The Daily Mail reports British Prime Minister David Cameron will demand Internet search engines take action to block queries about child sex abuse, threatening legislation if they fail to comply. Metro says Cameron believes his crackdown will halt the “corrosion of childhood”.

USA Today says police in Ohio are searching a neighbourhood in a Cleveland suburb after the discovery of three dead women. Police chief Ralph Spotts has reportedly told the searchers to brace themselves for the possibility of finding one or two more bodies.

The Knox Register reports the US Navy is planning to recover four unarmed bombs it dropped in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park of Australia and said the chance of them exploding was extremely remote. The four bombs were dropped from a pair of US Harrier jets on Tuesday.

Irish dancers have set a world record in Dublin for the longest Riverdance line. The Journal says more than 2,000 people from 163 dance schools in 44 countries gathered on the banks of the River Liffey on Sunday, led by Jean Butler, the lead dancer in the first ever show of Riverdance in 1994.

 

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